Can a Dropped Object Have Rate,Time, and Distance?

  If you read my weekend entries, you'll notice I had two this past weekend, asking people to find the distance it took for a coin to fall from the top to the ground.

I did that because I realized a dropped object has rate, time, and distance just like a car or runner does.  The only difference really is one is horizontal while the other is vertical.

Now admittedly, when you drop an object, you have a couple more things to keep track of but the concept is roughly the same.  The difference lies in having to account for gravity at 9.8 m/sec/sec in the equations.

Its easy to show both. NASA has a lovely chart on free falling objects without air resistance.  Velocity = acceleration * time.  Acceleration is defined as 9.8m/sec/sec. Distance on the other hand is acceleration *time^2 all divided by 2. 

Unfortunately, we tend to only present problems which traditionally fall into the rate * time = distance.  I think its time to sneak a few of these type of problems into daily work.  Imagine also sneaking in Galileo because he really was the first person to experiment with finding out if two objects of unequal mass would fall at different rates. 

This was the prevailing scientific thought originating with Aristotle who believed the rate of falling was proportional to its mass.  In other words a 10 kg rock would fall 10 times faster than a 1 kg rock.  At the time Galileo was mocked but time proved his observations to be correct.

Some real life examples of free falling objects include cats jumping off of ledges, throwing a pizza up into the air when twirling it, leaves falling from trees, or my favorite those free fall rides at amusement parks.  They are the ones that look a bit like an elevator, go straight up to the top, then are released to fall, scaring the tar out of people before hitting bottom.  There is even a certain amount of free fall involved with people who jump out of airplanes.  They free fall until a certain height when they engage their shoots.

The example I experience most of the time has to do with children dropping rocks off the top of the hill, not realizing my house is at the bottom.  I know there are people there when the rocks hit my truck and dent it.  You should hear me scream up the hill at them.

Have a great day.  Let me know what you think.